Wednesday, February 13, 2008

We read Kevin O'Brien so you don't have to ...Column:It's a war, with briefs and a gavel
February 13, 2008
Topic: Six al-Qaeda members, alleged to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks, are about to go on trial in a military court. This, one might presume, is a good thing. But not to Kevin. It offers him a chance to rail once again against the sins of the U.S. justice system, which is practically bending over backward to help these sinister weasels, and giving aid to our enemy in the process…
Kevin's Sanity Level Today: 74 percent
What Your Head Would Feel Like if You Read it Yourself: Remember that time your wife’s uncle who listens to talk radio came to visit? He stayed for three days, talking nonstop about black helicopters and how Hillary Clinton is probably a lesbian. You kept trying to change the subject. “Hey, I hear the walleye are biting near Sandusky,” you’d say. That would only prompt him to launch into a 45-minute monologue about a conspiracy involving the Forestry Service.
Charting Kevin's Logic:
1. Kevin’s working from the more basic pages of the Rote Republican Playbook today. Terrorists are bad, he argues. They blow up little children and excel at a high-level of assholeness. If they attended the University of Being a Huge Prick, they’d surely be in the gifted class. And since they don’t believe in our laws, why should they get the benefit of our legal system, which takes into account the rights of the defendant?
2. Kevin’s on solid emotional ground here. In a national poll that we just fabricated, even people who are against violence and drive green Subaru Foresters agree that we should stomp on the terrorists heads until they look like red Cream of Wheat.
3. Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that. The president’s spent the last eight years bragging up democracy, the rule of law, fair elections -- blah, blah, blah – to anyone who’ll listen. So now that push comes to shove, we have to pretend we actually believe in this stuff, lest we be considered…
4. Hypocrites, which is where we’re at now. In the world’s view, America ain’t exactly known for walking it like we talk it. We’re big on democracy, but our biggest allies in the Middle East are as anti-democratic as they get (see Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.). And after we nabbed the terrorists, we suddenly decided we weren’t that high on that whole rule of law thing either.
5. Fortunately, for the past eight years, we could care less if the world thinks we’re hypocrites. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked very well. We’ve learned during the Iraq war that it’s way better to have friends, since it’s really hard and expensive to go around kicking everyone’s ass by yourself. But the downside about having friends is you have to worry about their feelings and care what they think. Which means you have to try not to be such a dick yourself.
6. Final conclusion: When you think about it that way, democracy kinda sucks, doesn’t it?